nations to circumvent israel and not negotiate directly in order to get its own victory at the united nations at the expense of israel. >> eliot: let's play this out. didn't we have the leverage with abbas and the palestinian authority to force them to go back to the table or frankly to get prime minister netanyahu to go back to the table with abbas to move that process forward hamas out of the equation perhaps eliminating this current explosion of violence. >> eliot, i have no illusions that under the circumstances that have existed and never never have any american diplomat or any american administration been able to force their will on the parties where the parties themselves are not prepared to negotiate in good faith to settle the final status issues that need to be settled. and so we've seen this ever since the obama administration came in and focused its attention on settlement construction in the west bank. it strategically lost the capacity to influence events because it lost the support of the palestinian authority for failing to deliver on settlement -- freeze on settlement